


break the rules, burn your bridges

by kimaracretak



Series: Do the Dark [2]
Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, F/M, Russian Politics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 06:51:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3519515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Crimean War begins, The Darkling plots, Alina copes, Genya lies, Nikolai steals. A modern retelling of Siege & Storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude 12/21

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday emily i'm gonna go hide in a pillow fort while you throw things at me

_this is what i brought you, this you can keep / this is what i brought, you may forget me_

Alina wakes to a silence so complete she knows immediately that she's dead. She can't feel, can't hear, can only see shadows twining around the edges of the blank white totality of her vision.

_So dead girls get to watch movies,_ she thinks, and would have smiled if she could feel her face.  _Pity about the selection though._ Because the longer she observes, the more the shadows seem to be taking shape.  Maisky's shape, to be specific. And Alina's not necessarily up on all the latest research of ghosts and the afterlife, but she's pretty sure that the dead girl is supposed to be the one doing the haunting, not her murderer.

Neither of them were very good at following the rules in life, though, so here Maisky's shadow sits, cross-legged in the middle of the air, smirking at her. “Clever girl,” he remarks, casually as if they were back in her apartment. “They love you now that you're dead, you know.”

_Go away_ , she thinks sulkily. Bad enough Maisky's ruining her death, she can't even take advantage of their aloneness to cross her arms and kick the ground like the petulant teenager Maisky so often makes her feel like – the petulant teenager who is  _so_ good at angering Maisky into revealing things he didn't want to.

“Oh, that would be no fun,” he purrs, leaning forward. He's close, Alina realizes dimly – she can feel his presence more than she can feel her own body, in this netherworld.

Were she alive, she would have replied,  _we never had fun_ , and it would have been a lie, and then a fight, and then a quick fuck pressed against the nearest flat vertical surface. Here, though, here where she can't speak or fight or fuck, she concentrates on focusing all of her anger on the man in front of her. Death, if it is going to be this difficult, should come with perks. Like turning emotions into lasers that could be directed against insufferable men who insist on making death even  _harder._

He laughs. “Well, then, if you insist.” He fades away, shadows disappearing back into the corners of her vision until all is white again. The relief soon gives way to loneliness, though, and she wonders idly what the point of death is if she can still think.

Maybe she's not dead. Maybe Genya stole her broken body away from the remnants of the press conference and this is some new sort of FSB retribution. Maybe her Ukrainian agent who set the bomb in the first place had an attack of conscience and is in the middle of trying to revive her.

She tries to shut her eyes, finds them already closed.

Maybe this is her penance for trying to right Maisky's wrongs. Maybe she never had a hope of grasping any sort of rightness at all. Pretty, naive _Sankta Alina_ , pressing rubles into palms and smiling lips onto cheeks and thinking she was god's gift to Russia, if not humanity. Pretty, dead _prizrak Alina,_ who is not a much better ghost than she was a girl.

Later, she becomes aware of a tapping echoing in her head, the first sound that's not Maisky's voice she's heard since the bomb. Later, something above her head hisses and creaks and moves and a hand lifts her out of what must be a sensory deprivation tank, not a coffin.

Later, when she is no longer dead, Nikolai Lantsov says, _welcome back._

 


	2. Kak Ty Mozhesh Zhdat'

_как будто жизнь остановилась / на полпути к мечте (as if life stopped / halfway to the dream)_

The first thing Alina says, after, is _how long was I dead?_

She hears Nikolai stumble over his first, wishful denial – _you weren't, you're fine_ – before he says, aloud, “Not that long. Christ, Alina, if I hadn't known you were going to do something stupid, if I hadn't..."

He trails off, and Alina shivers under the thin military-issue blanket. Cold seeps through the walls of the sub, the _Severodvinsk_ 's metal cocoon only flimsy reassurance against the ocean outside. In truth, she hadn't expected to survive the press conference; her bomb and Maisky's guards should have put an end to even the smallest chances of her having a life to go back to. But some stubborn, stupid part of her had still hoped – probably the same stubborn, stupid part of her that had gotten her into this mess to begin with, the part that had landed her next to this (also stubborn, also stupid) boy kilometers under the sea. “Yeah, well. I owe you one.”

“One? You were barely two meters away from that bomb when it went off. I never thought I'd see you in one piece again!” His voice cracks, desperation spidering through words Alina doesn't want to hear.

“Two, then. Three and a kiss. I don't want to talk about it,” she finishes sharply. She presses her cheek against the bulkhead, imagines she can hear the waves through the steel. It would be easier if she could go back to being dead. Ghosts could slip through bulkheads, dissolve on the Black Sea waves. Hoping to survive had never meant wanting to deal with the fallout. _Immature brat,_ she scolds herself, but can't summon up any real animosity.

Nikolai watches her in silence, and she can't shake the feeling that it's more of a condemnation than anything he could say aloud. “Fine. But answer me this, then, if you feel you can allow us minor nongovernmental peasants a glimpse into your precious mind: what in the name of every saint did you think you were doing?”

Alina pulls the blanket over her head. Schoolyard logic, but it makes the admission come easier. “Helping.”

“Helping,” he echoes, grief and disbelief strangling the word. “Helping what, by, by, why, helping Russia by letting a Ukrainian suicide bomb a press conference from the President's son and the Foreign Minister's daughter and the head of the FSB and saints know how many ambassadors and...” He trails off, list of dignitaries exhausted.

“It wasn't supposed to be quite like that,” she mutters, kicking unhappily at the ground. She realises, then, that she doesn't quite know what 'like that' actually _was_ like. She's not sure she's ready to face learning what happened after she fell, though she's definitely sure that the fact Nikolai hasn't yet explained it to her is a kindness she doesn't deserve. “Can you just – I need some time.”

He stands up slowly. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay, as long as you didn't set up any more bombings I should be aware of in the next few hours.”

She doesn't do him the courtesy of laughing. After he leaves – and he _does_ do her the courtesy of not mentioning she's just kicked him out of his own quarters – she flops back on the bed, wincing as the hard mattress prods at some of the bruises she's sure to spend weeks discovering.

She has lists to make. She needs to find out how long she's been on the _Severodvinsk_ , who survived the bombing, who knows she's alive, who's in charge in Kiev and Donetsk and what the Chinese and the Finnish think. Mostly, though, she needs coffee and a sulk and nonmedicated sleep. The next few hours might be her last chance at any of those for quite some time.

 

*

 

Alina wakes to the door of Nikolai's quarters being slammed open by a woman she feels like she should know. “Who – when is it?” There's a question she could ask that doesn't make her sound like an idiot, she thinks dimly, but that self-awareness is all that's left to her, intelligent words gone somewhere unreachable along with the name of the woman in the doorway. Her throat is dry and she feels rather like she's been dragged behind a rail car for the entire length of the Trans-Siberian. “I was asleep,” she adds unnecessarily, and can't stop a note of accusation from slipping into the words.

“I know,” the woman says. Alina takes a millisecond to pretend that smirk isn't directed at her. “That would be why Nikolai sent me to wake you.”

Alina can't help the smile that tugs at the corner of her mouth, but she suppresses it before it can do more than half-form. Trust Nikolai to find someone else to do his dirty work for him, even now. Then again, in his position, she certainly wouldn't want the responsibility of waking her up.

“Yes, well, since you're … you … and not him, you don't have anything to worry about, I promise.” Shit. She really should know this woman's name. She's a journalist, or a Ministry staffer, or one of Genya's FSB women, or...

The woman sighs. “You know, for someone with aspirations to the Foreign Minister's job, you're really crap at keeping track of ambassadors.”

Ambassadors? Surely the woman was too young, hardly older than Alina herself … except … “Fuck. You're the Chinese ambassador's daughter, aren't you?”

“Tamar Kir-Baatar. I would say it's nice to meet you properly, but you have just helped start a war.”

“Yeah.” Maybe if she drags the word out through enough syllables Tamar will go away. She tugs a hand through her hair, wishing Tamar would stop glaring at her. “A little bit. Wasn't just me. I mean. I mostly meant to stop it.” Saints, she sounds five years old. She bites her tongue before she can add _I didn't mean it,_ but she knows Tamar knows how close she was to saying it.

Tamar narrows her eyes. “Sure.”

And suddenly horror settles in Alina's stomach, colder than the sea outside. Ambassador's daughter. Nikolai had said there had been ambassadors at the press conference, the conference Alina can't remember even the parts of from before the bomb went off. “Your father...Saints, Tamar, did he – did I...” Alina wants to reach back in time and strangle her past self who had thought this was a good idea.

Tamar's lip curls. “Well, he's not _dead_ , thanks for asking.”

But he must have been there, must be hurt, or Tamar wouldn't be looking at her like _that_. She hadn't known the woman more than to greet at diplomatic functions before this, her father had only been appointed Beijing's ambassador to Moscow a year ago, and Alina couldn't think of anything else she could have done to earn her fury. “Fuck. Tamar, I'm so – I'm so sorry, I don't know what to say...”

“Personally, I think you've said enough for the foreseeable future. Nikolai's set up a strategy table in the mess hall. Time for you to listen, if you think you can manage to deal with something not about you for more than ten seconds.”

“Sure,” Alina whispered numbly, scanning the tiny room for her shoes. “Sure, yeah, I can – I can do that.”

Tamar doesn't look like she's certain of that at all, but after Alina tugs on her boots, she leads them out of Nikolai's quarters without another word.

 


	3. where is the edge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> obligatory disclaimer that none of the russian cabinet ministers or ships mentioned here are meant to share anything with their real life counterparts besides their names

_where is the light of your deepest devotions? / i pray that it's still alive_

Alina recognizes a surprising number of the ragtag group Nikolai's collected in his war room. Ambassadors' children, ministers' children, navy officers, even a few FSB officers. None of them could be a day over twenty-seven. Some of them barely look old enough to be in university.

 _Children,_ she realizes with a rush of exhaustion, steadying herself against the wall with a very _un_ steady hand. _This war is going to be fought with Russia's children._ The ones who couldn't call their lives _good_ because they had no memories of communism to compare them to. The ones who nevertheless knew that _better_ wasn't _enough._ The ones who would turn traitor. For her.

“The dead girl wakes,” Nikolai says. Not unkindly, not in front of others, but he's not done with their conversation from before and wants to make sure she knows it. As if she would ever be allowed the courtesy of not-knowing again.

“The dead girl needs a briefing,” Tamar replies. She, on the other hand, has no such compunctions about unkindness. Alina just takes the indicated seat, still-quiet like she's six and hiding under her father's desk while he conducts meetings about national security. She doesn't trust her voice, anyway.

The woman at Nikolai's side smirks. “She wouldn't need one if she hadn't gotten herself blown up in her own fucking bomb. Amateur.” A murmur runs through the rest of the group.

Zoya Nazyalensky. Pretty as the Arctic winds and twice as cold, and Alina's heart twists at the sound of her voice. She had wanted them to be friends, once. They almost had been, once, before they had realized that their foreign policy opinions hardly even orbited the same star. Alina's initial jealousy about Zoya's relationship with Nikolai, she is not too blind to admit, probably hadn't helped matters, though Zoya's disinclination to take responsibility for her own jealousy about Alina's Ministry job still rankles.

“ _Zoya,_ ” Nikolai scolds before Alina can come up with an appropriate response. Zoya sniffs and tosses her head and doesn't apologize, but she doesn't make any other snide comments either. “Now. If we could please get started. I would say we all know each other here, but seeing as how I'm _sure_ you all know me, and considering my frankly unmatchable charm, I think some introductions are in order. Don't worry, Zoya talked me out of using code names.”

Alina does know most of the group but she listens anyway, attentive for any new information. Tamar has a brother, Tolya, who stands in the back of the room with a hand resting on what looks suspiciously like an axe. Marie, the daughter of the Chief of Staff and someone Alina would never have guessed would throw her lot in with Nikolai – except for the presence of Sergei, the Justice Minister's son. And where there's Marie, there's Nadia, the much-younger sister of the Finance Minister. Paja, the Indian ambassador's daughter looks like she's still deciding whether to kiss or kill Pavel, whose last name doesn't get said but whom Alina is betting is South Ossetian, and probably related to someone important there. She forces herself to catch the names of every navy and FSB officer. They all know they're going to be the first to die, and she owes them that much.

She makes careful note of the absences as well: no one from any of the Western embassies. No reporters. One Finn, who doesn't give his name but isn't smart enough to stick the lanyard of his embassy badge out of sight. Only Tamar and Tolya from China, and no one from Mongolia. And she realizes: _The world doesn't think we're at war._

“It's been three weeks since the press conference,” Nikolai says, and Alina is jolted back to the present. Three weeks – she'd lost more time than she'd thought. She pushes aside her irritation at Nikolai for not telling her sooner. “Three weeks, and we're starting to see what this war is going to look like. You,” he points to Alina, “are dead. No one's very happy about it, but you do make a beautiful martyr.”

“Fuck off,” she mutters amidst the laughter. Nikolai's showmanship, she thinks, is going to get on her nerves more quickly than she'd thought.

“I,” he continues, as if she hadn't spoken, “am a traitor, but that's not new. Your father,” pointing at Marie, “is, forgive me, doing a decent impression of a personification of evil.”

Marie makes a face from where she's slumped against Sergei's shoulder. “Forgiveness takes energy. Fortunately for you, so does offense.”

“What Nikolai _means_ ,” Zoya says irritably, “Is that all of us have, for whatever reason, chosen to put the pursuit of peace above our loyalty to the government. And if we're lucky, we'll live long enough to regret it.”

Tamar snorts. “Always the optimist, Nazyalensky. Not all of us are breaking our country's laws.”

“Oh? What are you doing here then? Because last I heard the acting ambassador was pretty firm about China not being involved.”

Tamar's eyes flicker to Nadia, so quick that Alina almost wonders if she's imagining things. “Please. Someone has to keep your country from imploding.”

“ _Quiet_ ,” Paja snaps, and every head in the room turns to her. “If starting a second war among ourselves is your plan, then I'm leaving.”

“It's more of a plan than we had five minutes ago.” Nikolai tries a smile, but his attempt at humor falls flat. “Fine. As long as we're agreed that we take one enemy at a time and we deal with Maisky first.”

The invocation of Maisky's name finally quells the room. “ _Thank_ you.” Alina wonders if she's the only one who can hear the faint tremble of relief in his voice. “And as far as plans go, I believe Alina can speak to that.”

 _Fuck_ . They were already way past any plan Alina had had. On the other hand, she wasn't a diplomatic officer for nothing. “Well, I might need to make a few adjustments considering that _someone_ didn't tell me that I had been dead for three weeks.” Nikolai opens his mouth to respond, but Zoya puts a quieting hand on his arm. “Regardless. I have – had – some personal leverage with Maisky and – his people.” She can't quite bring Genya into the room, not yet. “He sees me as a threat, whether I'm alive or not. We need to exploit that.”

“I thought you already tried fucking him into submission.” Zoya, again, and Alina watches several gazes harden. She had hoped that particular topic could remain something other than general gossip.

“Yes, well. That wasn't planned then and it certainly isn't planned now.” Nadia, Pavel, and Nikolai look convinced. No one else does. She tries not to dwell on it too much. “What I _meant_ was, we need to get some friendly papers to run op-ed pieces with my name on them. Call them posthumous articles for now, until we can see whether I'm more use alive or dead, but I want my name out there.” It sounds, she realizes, an awful lot like the plan she had had before she left for Kiev, with even less of a chance for success.

The radio crackles before anyone can add anything. Alina gives silent thanks for the interruption before she registers the words.

“Submarine _Severodvinsk,_ this is Admiral Vitko aboard the _Moskva._ You have been detected. Surface and prepare to be boarded.”

 


	4. in pieces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> turns out when u move across the ocean from ur copy of _siege & storm_ for a year it gets a lot harder to write ur modern au version of _siege & storm_, huh
> 
> (yikes it's been Forever, i am back bc it is emily's birthday and i am obliged to hurt her w grisha things on her birthday)

_what you build you lay to waste / there's truth in your lies_

The room falls quieter than death, and Alina's grip goes slack around the arms of her chair. Nikolai's smile wavers for the first time

" _Severodvinsk,_ we have orders to take the traitor Starkova alive. Do not think we need to extend the same courtesy to the rest of you. Surface and prepare to be boarded."

Alina bites her lip. "Do they know we're here? Or are they baiting us?"

"They know," Zoya snaps. "This is a twenty-three year old piece of junk, of course they know."

"They might —" Nikolai cuts himself off, scrubbing tiredly at his face. "No, she's right. If he's sent the _Moskva_ after us it's because he knows."

Well. She can't truly say she wasn't expecting it. Alina stands up, straightens her coat. "Can you send just me up there? In a — an escape pod, or whatever?"

A ripple of nervous laughter runs through the room. "It's a submarine, Alina," Nikolai says, with the kind condescension that always made her want to hit him. "There's a suit somewhere, _maybe_ , but I'm not putting you in it without training."

Before she can form a reply something explodes off to the side of the ship, and it rocks horribly to the side. Alina grabs for the table, wincing as it digs into her bruised stomach. "Okay," she says, somewhat breathless. "Okay, what if we —"

"You're an ass when you're trying to be a martyr, dead girl," Tamar snaps. "I say we surface. Fight our way through it. She'll be a distraction."

"Agreed," her brother rumbles, and the throbbing ache of Alina's injuries deepens as Nadia nods. She hadn't thought before there would be such a difference between offering and being offered.

"I want you to get out," Alina says. There's always a way out. There has to be a way out, for them if not for her: she's already had weeks more than she meant to live even if most of them were spent unconscious. "I want —"

The radio crackles again before she can finish the thought, and this time, Alina knows the voice.

"Alina," Genya says, "Alina, please come back. We still have things to say to each other."

Her voice is soft, laden with the charmed steel of FSB training, but beneath that it's _genuine_ , and Alina lands back in her seat with the shock of it. Genya, alive and still working with the government. Genya, alive and still wanting her, even if it's only to kill her again. "Surface, then," Alina says, and she almost doesn't recognise her own voice.

A surprised murmur runs through the room, and Zoya's voice rises above it. "Why? You going to try fucking her again, too?"

"Don't bring her into this, you _cherv' bespol_ —"

" _Stop._ " Nikolai's voice cracks through the room as another explosive charge goes off, closer this time. "Zoya, just fucking —"

Zoya, to her credit, looks contrite. "I didn't think I was right," she admits, and it's not an apology but it's enough. "Doesn't mean we'll let you go without a fight, Lina."

Alina shakes her head, trying to keep track of time that seems to have sped unkindly past her. "You might have to. Don't call me that. _Surface._ " She drops her gaze to the table, but can still feel the weight of everyone's eyes on her.

Paja breaks the silence. "So? Are we listening to her?" She alone sounds like she understands the weight of the decision that Alina's asking them to make, that their war stands already at a crossroads.

"Yeah," Nikolai says, after a long moment, and Alina hears the clatter of their own radio over the pounding of her heart. "Bridge, surface. Tell the _Moskva_  we're coming up."

 

*

 

Nikolai drags her to the bridge for the Severodvinsk's ascent, and Alina feels ever metre of water they slip through like knives through her skin. She feels flayed raw by the time they break the water's surface and pale sunlight cracks against the portholes.

"What do you think?" he asks, for her ears alone. "Worth it?"

She doesn't smile. "We'll find out, won't we?" She reaches for the radio, is surprised when her fingers don't leave bloody smears across it. "Genya. I'm here."

"I know you are, darling." She sounds serious, and that's the worst part of all. "I'm glad you're not dead."

"That makes —" _One of us_ , she'd been going to say, but suddenly she isn't sure that's true at all. Alina swallows hard. "Where's your master, _General_?"

Genya laughs, and Alina wonders for the first time where, exactly aboard the _Moskva_  her former friend was. "Does it matter? He could have saved all of us, but you decided you didn't want that. I thought you were smarter than that, you know."

"I thought salvation was reserved for friends." Alina feels Nikolai take her hand, and she squeezes it reflexively. "I still miss you, you know. Maybe I am an idiot."

"A beautiful one." Genya sighs, and there's a rustling on the other side of the radio. Alina can almost make out another voice. "You should come over here. We'll even let you bring a bodyguard."

 _We._  She has to mean Maisky, and Alina shivers at the thought. She wants to kill him. She wants to never see him again. "Why do I feel like that isn't a suggestion?"

"Perhaps because you're outgunned?" Genya says wryly. "Ten minutes, Alina."

Alina sets the radio down with a shaking hand. "It's a terrible idea," she says, but she knows even as the words leave her mouth that she'll be on the _Moskva_  in ten minutes anyway.

"Probably," Nikolai agrees, giving her hand a final squeeze before releasing it. "But most everything that's worth doing starts as a terrible idea."

"Like bombing a press conference?"

"I did say _most_."

Alina groans and buries her face in her hands. "Saints, Nikolai, what have I _done_?"

It's Zoya who answers, from where she's draped over the navigator's console. "Started something you need to finish. Take the twins, show him the world is watching."

It wasn't, Alina thinks, and that was the whole problem. But Tamar and Tolya are in the doorway now. Tolya's swapped his axe for a Vityaz-SN, and Alina suspects Tamar must have one (or, knowing her, possibly three or four) weapons hidden somewhere on her body as well.

Tamar smiles with too many teeth. "Time to redeem yourself, dead girl."

Alina bristles at the reminder that that name isn't going away, but she can't argue, not when its truth is one of the least hurtful ones. "Just remember Maisky's the only target," she says, and the twins roll their eyes in unison but say nothing.

"Here." Nikolai's at her side again, holding a wire and an earpiece. "Wear this. They'll know, I'm sure, but at least if you start screaming bloody murder I can get my pretty head and my equally pretty ship out of the way."

"Asshole." She grabs the wire, raking her nails across his palm, and starts fitting the earpiece. "I start screaming bloody murder, you start shooting _their_  goddamn ship."

Something not quite readable flickers across his face before he forces a smile. "Hope it doesn't come to that, then." He turns and busies himself opening the hatch.

The _Moskva_ is almost horrifying in its nearness, sunlight glinting shrapnel-bright against steel. Alina looks up only briefly before dizziness forces her gaze back down to the water, where a smaller boat bobs in the waves. "Nice of you to join," Genya's voice echoes in her ear.

Alina makes her way down to the smaller craft gingerly, feeling Tamar and Tolya silent at her back. Genya stands almost regal, uniform infuriatingly crisp in the sea air. Her face is criss-crossed with scars, a stark reminder of the last time they saw each other, but she's still beautiful. Even after everything, there's a warm coil of pride and _want_  low in Alina's belly.

"Genya," she says, raising her voice over the creak and grind of metal as the _Moskva_  begins to winch the boat upwards.

It's not Genya who responds. "Starkova," Maisky purrs, unfolding from the shadows at the stern like a snake. "I knew you couldn't resist her. Few can, though we set our minds to it."

Alina stands her ground as he walks forward. Genya doesn't move. "What do you want?"

"For shame, Alina, I'd thought we'd covered that already. The real question should be ... what do your new allies want?" His gaze lingers on the twins, and the click of a safety being removed is unmistakable. "How _is_  your father doing by the way? So sad, what some people will do when things don't go their way."

"They know the worst of me," Alina says. "Just like all the world will know the worst of you."

"The worst?" He smiles, takes Alina's hands in his and kisses them with surprisingly warm lips. "Russia was infinite once, and I will make her so again. That hardly seems so terrible." He looks up to the _Moskva_ 's deck and raises a hand, and the boat shudders to a halt three-quarters of the way up.

Suspended above the waves, they're caught in a moment almost out of time. Alina stares at Genya, silently wills her to speak. Genya, who dressed her up to die for Mother Russia and still refused to leave.

"What are we doing here, Genya?" she asks. Maisky is still holding her left hand but she ignores the heat of it, like Genya could be the only other person in the world. "Are we really back here again? How many endings do we need?" She can hear her voice crack on the last word.

Genya doesn't speak, just draws the small pistol from her side. In her peripheral vision, Alina can see the twins raise their guns as well. "Alina, love..."

The look in Genya's eyes clicks just in time. "Don't fire," she hisses, breaking from Maisky's grip to shove Tolya's gun hand down just as Genya launches herself at Maisky. A shot rings out behind her as Alina races to the side, boat swaying in the air with every step.

" _Nikolai!_ " she screams. " _Nikolai, fire!_ "

The _Severodvinsk_ is impossibly small in an impossibly beautiful ocean when Alina jumps.


End file.
